Jan 242012
 

Hi folks…this week we change things up just a bit.

First, the shows will be a bit shorter.  This week it is less than 11 minutes long.  Hell, even I don’t want to listen to myself for a half hour!

Also, we will occasionally, like today, find something government does that is good…whether they mean it to be or not.

So, sit back and enjoy today’s show.  The TSA actually did a good thing…not intentionally though.


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Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

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Jan 222012
 

This week there is news!

Deutsch: English: Otto Von Bismarck, Chancello...

Image via Wikipedia

The crack Coots News Team uncovered three good stories this week. Go figure! Weeks go by where the news just isn’t worth any attention and then we have three stories that deserve highlighting. I can’t decide if the news mongers are clueless rabble-rousers like the Wall Street protesters or fiendishly intelligent manipulators of public sentiment like our politicians. Anyway I had to make a choice today between Congress, the LA Unified School District and Germany. Any one of the three is abundantly scorn-worthy but I finally made a choice.

The winner is Germany.

Image via Wikipedia

It wasn’t even close. If there is a country that deserves to stand in the corner and wear a dunce cap, it is undeniably Germany. No other country comes close. The twentieth century should be dedicated to Germany, the instigator of our only two World Wars. Let’s just give them full credit. Germany invented World Wars and the two we experienced would never have happened without her. If we spent the first half of the twentieth century stopping those German World Wars, we spent the last half repairing the damage. There is just something terribly wrong about Germany. So much hubris, vanity, self congratulatory snobbery all wrapped up in a nice little package along with cuckoo clocks, strudel  and cars you can’t afford.  You couldn’t invent Germany.

The European economic crisis had it’s beginning in the welfare state mentality created by Bismark which became the model for the bloated European welfare system collapsing before our very eyes. You would think that Germans would be ashamed of their history and eager to create a new identity. Maybe that is why they support the European Union. Why else would they embrace its endless bureaucracy and limited freedom and rights. It all may be a smokescreen to hide the poisonous impact of the German state on the world under cover of the bland and oppressive European Union, just what Orwell warned us about. Who can say that Germany hasn’t been running a surreptitious World War III exporting German thinking to the rest of Europe? If so, it seems to be failing but that’s not the point of today’s story. Germany may be bad news for the world. German thinking may subvert reason and self interest as it spreads its influence throughout the world but Germany isn’t content with destroying the world. Germany is out to destroy Germany as today’s story demonstrates.  Maybe we should all be cheering.

It’s all about purity

Solar energy boondoggle

Today’s story is about Germany’s quest for ideological purity in energy. If there is an energy source that comes close to the purity of the old Nazi notion of the master race, it is energy from the sun. It is so pure, so natural and lets be honest so blond and blue eyed. No nasty combustion producing pollutants. No misbehaving particles from reactors to damage the neighborhood. The sun is the mother’s milk of energy sources. What German wouldn’t love it? And therefore the uber-wise Germans have decided to get rid of nuclear energy and seriously limit producing electricity from those nasty fossil fuels. But like always with Germany, reality trumps German intellect. All powerful as the German state may be and brilliant as the German intellect has proven itself, there is still a small problem with solar energy in Germany. The sun don’t shine in Germany and no amount of intellect or money will change that face. It’s taking Germany to bankruptcy. They have found the solar subsidy sinkhole.

Re-Evaluating Germany’s Blind Faith in the Sun

I wish I could trust our own government to be more practical but that German thinking is quite contagious.

 

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Jan 152012
 

Progress is our most important product!

Two stories today that tell you a lot about where we are going as a society. I know that I’m always saying how things are going to hell in a hand basket but there is still some of the old spirit left in the country. We haven’t all been transformed into self indulgent and selfish egomaniacs who have to experience self-gratification now and don’t care what it does to us or anybody else.

Not every movie is a non-stop explosion of unbelievable and incredibly noisy special effects that have nothing to do with the plot (oh I forgot, movies don’t have plots these days because today nobody can remember anything for more than 20 seconds).

Not every invention is designed to titillate the incredibly self-indulgent egos of the brain-dead products of modern education. At least not yet.

Where are those cities on the Moon?

We’ve come a long way from the optimistic ‘we can do anything’ mindset of the 50’s when I was a kid.  You know the one where ‘Progress was our most important product’. We all believed that there would be cities on the moon and outposts on other planets before the 20th century was history. We believed in the American spirit and American ingenuity. We believed in the shining beacon on the hill that would lead the world into a new era of freedom and liberty. And we didn’t have a clue about the train wreck of the 60’s where overindulged baby boomers would steer the country into the rocks just like that Italian cruise ship.

These days we may go bankrupts supporting the plethora of worthless, self-indulgent leeches which our country produces. We subsidize them when we ought to tax them out of existence.  No way these days we can afford the great expense of space exploration to free us from the limitations of life on this planet. We’re stuck on this rock.  What inspires people now is self-indulgent personal exultation like we can get from personal electronics like the iphone and ipad which even the welfare recipients can afford these days thanks to the ever more indulgent  welfare mentality taught in schools and supported by the greedy state bureaucrats that have supplanted government of and by the people.   But I digress.  We were talking about inventions.

Two stories today contrast the focus of modern technology today. One shows the long term thinking and focus that made America great and the other the mindless self-indulgence that is taking us down the path to chaos. You pick.

Universal Flu Vaccine Could Be Available by 2013

Do Swine love flue?

Do Swine love flu?

This one looks good. It seems that those silly yearly flu shots will soon be a thing of the past. For me, I stopped getting the flu shots years ago- about the same time I stopped getting the flu. I don’t know for sure that one is a consequence of the other but I’ve been suspicious ever since I found out that the government plays Russian roulette with the flue strains trying to guess which ones will be coming at you next yeat. How could the government know what flu would be active a year ahead of time anyway? It was more like playing the lottery than buying insurance. Far better to just stay healthy in the first place. Anyway the evidence is on my since since I have not gotten the flu since making that decision.

Still this new vaccine looks like progress even if it will destroy jobs and damage the economy. One shot that lasts for years whatever flu strain shows up. But I can’t help wondering why, if I don’t catch the flu now without the shots, I should worry about getting the new vaccine. It may be progress but do I need it. Food for thought. Still, there is no need to worry now. I have until 2013.

The other story is about an invention that allows you to read emails and text messages no matter what you might be doing

Email in your eye? Next-generation video screen glasses could lay messages or GPS over your field of vision

I’ve probably signaled my position but still the Coots want to know what you think.  Is there any American ingenuity left?  Or are we in a hopeless downward spiral?

 

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Jan 122012
 

Gonna get a bit serious today.  Instead of poking fun at government ineptness and stupidity, I want to warn you folks about the government nefarious plans to spy on you and shut your first amendment rights down…worse than they do already.

So…without further ado, sit back and enjoy…or not.  Sheep don’t want to be awakened.

[powerpress]

  •  SOPA, PIPA, and the nuclear option.
  • Homeland Security and journalistic free speech.

Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

More Posts - Website - Twitter

Jan 082012
 
Young chinese water dragon

Image via Wikipedia

Are you prepared for the year of the Water Dragon?

Well we may be looking at the Chinese New Year of the Dragon in a few weeks but here in California we are celebrating the Year of the Wolf. It’s been 90 years since anybody saw a wolf in California but now we have a wolf from Idaho seeking fame and fortune in California.

With all the government regulations, only wild creatures like wolves get to roam at will even if they do have to wear the mandatory tracking devices like California’s newest transient OR7. In the old days, wolves were evil creatures who devoured livestock and small children. One of the marks of civilization was eliminating threats like wolf packs; so primitive, our forbears.

That was then.  This is now.

Wild wolves were exterminated from the West in the early 1900s because they were viewed as a threat to livestock. Biologists now recognize that wolves play an important role in managing deer and elk herds and, in turn, the forests they live in.

Now in the more enlightened and nuanced 21st century, it is humans who are seen as the threat. Civilization stops in its tracks because of some obscure snail or bird species and enlightened regulators shut down California agriculture because of some insignificant fish. You might think that Californians would take action to change this destructive course but the reality is that people that actually earn a living in the private sector in California are outnumbered by people who live on the dole- government employees and welfare recipients. The whole state is a Ponzi scheme sucking the life out of anybody stupid enough to work for a living. But I digress.

 So far so good!

gray wolf

Image by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Midwest Region via Flickr

So here in California, and specifically Northern California we all anticipate the return of the wolf. OR7 seems to be remarkably well behaved during his trek. There have been no attacks on livestock or small children along the way. Of course the scientists have kept track of him as he crossed Oregon and entered California, apparently looking for his own version of a California girl. So far so good. He may be happy in Siskiyou county where there aren’t many people. But I doubt it.

The experts think he is looking for female companionship but nobody seems to have thought about letting him range so far on this foolish quest. There aren’t any other wolves here, male or female. I see disaster in the future for OR7. He is either doomed to a long and lonely life or even worse, those unstoppable government busybodies will intervene and play dating game with OR7. It’s either a lonely future or an arranged marriage. I can’t believe the government will let OR7 die lonely. For California, it’s the year of the wolf.

 

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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